AXSChat Podcast with Esther Dakin-Poole

09/25/20 • 39 min

Hosted by Antonio Santos, Debra Ruh and Neil Milliken.
Esther Dakin-Poole is a Council member and Coordinator of the current UK Assistive Products List (UK APL) initiative for The British Assistive Technology Association (BATA) and WHO-GATE Programme, designed to establish which are the most essential assistive products in the UK today. Esther is a Director and Secretary of GAATO, The Global Alliance of Assistive Technology Organizations based in Geneva, Switzerland. She is also Head of Education & Development at Smile Smart Technology, her family’s enterprise who innovate and provide assistive technology to children and adults with complex disabilities and specialise in neuro disability switching, controls and linkages between digital access and mobility training. She has grown up as a carer for her younger sister who has Downs Syndrome and sees her as one of the most enlightening people in her life. Esther’s alma mater is SOAS, University of London where she most recently studied international diplomacy and she has historic regional focus on East and Southern Africa and South-East Asia.

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AXSChat Podcast with Andy Black - Tech Accessibility Evangelist

Hosted by Antonio Santos, Debra Ruh and Neil Milliken.

Andy Black has over 30 years’ experience in tech for learning and inclusion. Renowned in the Noughties for his forty gadgets in forty minutes live demonstration and being digitally resident in most things he should be and some he thinks he now possibly should not have been. He floated the idea of the mobile device (phone) as Lord of the ring’s device or as a tech swiss army knife in the 90’s. He worked as a part of a team horizon scanning emerging technologies in the commercial space with potential uses in education.

Andy as a dyslexic dyspraxia diagnosed in his 50’s but writ large through his whole life experience. Passionate about tech for inclusion be that SMS for deaf learners in further education or specialist stem sign language on 1st gen apple iPod touches back in the early 2000’s.

Andy discovered twitter in early 2008 he believes his live tweeting at events may have got Neil Milliken of #AXSCHAT started on his twitter journey.

He now heads a small but incredibly talented team championing business engagement and accessibility for internal staff in a Government department in the UK.

Andy in 2019 co-founded a Cross Government Group Office 365 Accessibility Group looking at leverage best Accessibility features in O365.

Outside of work he is a non-exec director of a community farm, scout leader passionate is cyclist walker climber lover of the outdoors has two fantastic kids and long suffering talented wife.

He used to shy away from describing himself as a polymath but to be honest I am into a lot of stuff. Maybe too many things for my own good.

Passionate believer in us all striving to be Accessible by Default and that the network human or electronic is the answer to anything, now what is the question.

A colleague once described Andy: “to describe Andy as an out of the box thinker misses the point Andy doesn’t understand what a box is. He will make linkage find opportunities and give that commitment to make a difference to learners. Frankly at times he is exhausting to work with“

He has in the past been tempted to write an “e- book “entitled “what do when the kit doesn’t work apart from tell jokes (my jokes are terrible by the way).

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AXSChat Podcast with Debra, Ruh, Neil Milliken and Antonio Santos

Antonio Santos is a Social Media Business Evangelist and Senior Data Intelligence Expert, at Atos, focusing on Digital Inclusion, Social Media Engagement, and Social Business. He is a Sociologist with expertise on Applied Research; he previously worked in the Media, Military, Public Sector and Telecom before joining Siemens IT in 2006 in Cork and Atos in 2011. According to Onalytica who measures online presence and influence, Antonio is the 3rd most influential employee in the world, in Consulting based on data from Twitter and LinkedIn and number one on Sustainability amongst employees of the 48 most important consulting companies globally.

In 2014 with Debra Ruh and Neil Milliken he creates axschat. A weekly Twitter chat on diversity and inclusion, who become the most popular twitter conversation on that topic over the last six years. AXSChat was chosen by Valuable 500 CEO Caroline Casey to become one of their primary media partners and to support their efforts to create a community to revolutionise disability inclusion through business leadership and opportunity.

Debra Ruh is a seasoned entrepreneur that focuses on Global Disability Inclusion, ICT Accessibility, EmployAbility, Marketing and Communications Strategies and Digital Media. She has provided global leadership to governments, corporations, NGOs and DPO’s (Disability Persons Organizations) all over the world supporting research, outreach, marketing strategies, policy and standards initiatives with public- and private-sector. Policy, Legislative and Technical Experience includes the United Nations Convention of Rights for People with Disabilities (CRPD), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 503, 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, W3C, WCAG 2.0 and ISO. Debra is also a seasoned Entrepreneur (founder of three firms): Ruh Global Communications, TecAccess, Strategic Performance Solutions.
Neil currently works for Atos as Head of Accessibility & Inclusion where his role is to help make the world a better place by delivering better technology for our customers and staff, embedding inclusive practice into the Business As Usual Processes of organisations with thousands of employees and turnovers numbering in billions.

He created the Atos Centre of Competence encompassing Accessibility, Inclusive Design and Assistive Technology Services. This team now services multiple accounts and delivers best practice, support and consultancy for the organisation. www.atos.net/iux

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AXSChat Podcast - AXSChat Podcast with Esther Dakin-Poole

Transcript

WEBVTT
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Neil Milliken: Hello and welcome to access chat. I'm delighted that we're being joined today by yesterday can pull, who is doing some work with the British Assistive Technology Association and gates.
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00:00:12.509 --> 00:00:21.660
Neil Milliken: About building an assistant product list. So can you tell us a little bit more about your work and how this came into being, please.
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00:00:22.770 --> 00:00:31.770
Esther Daki